Somebody else's thoughts....
It Took Biden, Trump and Qatar to Do What One Israeli Prime Minister Should Have Done
Two U.S. administrations collaborating to try to resolve an international crisis is unprecedented. Netanyahu may have waited with the cease-fire for Trump, but he may soon learn that his place in Trump's world has been marginalized
Alon Pinkas
Jan 17, 2025 10:05 pm IST
It took 11 months since the first draft of the cease-fire and hostage release agreement was presented in March, nine months since Joe Biden publicly described the contours of the deal, eight months since it became UN Security Council Resolution 2735, seven months since it was reintroduced in July, and six months since then-Defense Minister Yoav Gallant demanded that the deal be done.
It took two U.S. administrations and Qatar to get an Israeli prime minister to do in 2025 what he could have and should have done a long time ago: Sign the deal and save the hostages.
But no, Benjamin Netanyahu has a corruption trial to think about, as well as the cohesion of his governing coalition, and these things always override statesmanship, responsibility and basic human decency. The man who never took responsibility for the calamity of October 7, 2023, had time.
He had time first to prolong the war and distance himself from the catastrophe, even when by mid-2024 the army had made it unequivocally clear that short of occupying the entire Gaza Strip, all attainable military goals had been reached. Then he waited for the U.S. elections, thinking that if Donald Trump won, he could manipulate the new president into letting the war continue.
When on Wednesday Trump wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social, about the "EPIC cease-fire agreement," it was game over for Netanyahu. It remains to be seen how epic this very precarious cease-fire will be, but one thing is clear: Once Trump called it "epic" and claimed – not without justification – credit for making it happen, Netanyahu had no opt-out option, as much as he would have wanted one.
So now Netanyahu has to approve the deal, which is what the cabinet was expected to do Friday. On-brand Netanyahu now finds himself in a familiar and self-inflicted untenable position: making contradictory promises to different people. He's placating his war-glorifying far-right coalition members, who are shamelessly "demanding" that the war continue.
He's telling them: "Stop overdramatizing this and threatening me. You know that the cease-fire won't hold and there probably won't be a second phase that includes a withdrawal." But at the same time, starting Monday he'll need to reinforce a commitment to President Trump that Israel fully intends to adhere to the cease-fire and proceed into the second phase.
The argument is valid: Trump pressured Netanyahu into agreeing to a deal he resisted since May. Trump declared three times since the November election that he wanted it all wrapped up and off his desk. It's equally valid that Netanyahu deliberately wanted to give Trump what he refused to give Biden.
Even more valid is the assessment that this was Netanyahu's plan ever since Biden withdrew from the presidential race in July: Wait until the election, and if Trump wins, wait until just a few days before Inauguration Day on January 20.
Netanyahu prolonged the war by incessantly floating slogans about "total victory" and "eradicating Hamas." In May he was pontificating about how Biden was dangerously trying to foist a Palestinian state on Israel. By July he needed a different excuse. On July 5, the deal he agreed to on Tuesday was presented again.
It took Netanyahu three weeks of typical and intentional procrastination before he came up with the ingenious argument that the Philadelphi corridor, a 14-kilometer (8.7-mile) road stretching along Gaza's southern border, was of critical strategic importance to Israel. He turned this road into the 1683 siege of Vienna, as if the survival of Western civilization depended on it. Or, if you're a 20th-century history buff, it was his Stalingrad.
Six months later, the Philadelphi corridor seems like just another dusty road that Israel will leave if there is a second phase to the agreement.
The Biden administration kept insisting, albeit without putting any real pressure on Israel, and Qatar kept trying to mediate, but Trump's election provided the game changer. If 2024 hadn't been an election year or if Kamala Harris had been elected, it's highly doubtful we would have a deal.
Two U.S. administrations collaborating to try to resolve an international crisis is unprecedented. Biden and Trump had their teams join efforts to get this done, each for his own interests. Biden wanted some sort of closure after more than a year of failing to affect Netanyahu's behavior and policy, while Trump undoubtedly wanted to rid his agenda of this irritant that provides the United States with zero net value.
Unlike the 1980 Iran hostage crisis, Trump didn't ask Netanyahu to delay an agreement until he was in office. He wanted it done before that. In 1980, the Carter administration was trying to resolve a hostage crisis where 53 Americans were held in Iran by radical students loyal to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who had returned to the country a year earlier. After the November 1980 election, Ronald Reagan's transition team not only didn't help the Carter administration, but as later reports contended, it sent indirect messages to Iran: "Wait until after January 1981."
In the last few days, Biden and Trump engaged in a predictable but ultimately insignificant battle for credit; on Thursday Haaretz provided a very good account of the dynamic of how the two worked together and then claimed credit separately.
The Americans began drafting a plan for a cease-fire and a hostage deal as early as December 2023, a month after the first hostage deal was concluded. Netanyahu, intent on prosecuting the war and destroying Hamas, ignored it.
When Washington presented the plan as part of a broader blueprint for postwar Gaza that included a government replacing Hamas, Netanyahu's resistance grew. He saw an end to the war as an abject failure and fully understood that he would be held accountable for the October 7 disaster and his policy of strengthening Hamas in order to incapacitate the Palestinian Authority so that he never had to negotiate the future of Israeli-Palestinian relations.
When asked by the Americans about the political goals of the war, all Netanyahu had to say was "total victory." When he was asked how he intended to achieve that, he conveniently never responded. By the time he dismissed Biden's May 27 proposal, which Biden was courteous enough to credit Netanyahu for crafting, the army and Defense Minister Gallant were already talking about a bloody war of attrition and a gradual sinking into a Vietnam-like quagmire.
Neither that nor the public outcry over Netanyahu's desertion of the hostages – breaching not only Israeli interests but also the value of solidarity in Jewish tradition and Israeli culture – had an impact on the prime minister. At that time he was still hoping for an escalation with Iran, which arrived in October, but not broadly enough for him.
The Biden administration was content with bland and aimless press conferences where officials expressed "concern" and hopes for a deal, while politely asking Israel to "exercise restraint." Time and time again, Netanyahu manipulated, deceived and misled Biden and his officials, so much so that in the last year it seemed they had been awarded the flattest learning curve in the history of international relations.
Enter Donald Trump. It's not that he was well-versed on the facts and details of the Gaza war or the greater Middle East, but more than he is war-averse, he has other priorities, like Ukraine and China. He sees the Gaza war as an unwelcome distraction. Netanyahu may have waited with the cease-fire for Trump, but he may soon learn that his place in Trump's world has been marginalized.
Or it's all over. When it comes to his ability to influence Trump on Iran, that's not what he expected.
haaretz.com
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